Deeplinks Blog posts about Security

We learned on Tuesday evening that a U.S. federal magistrate judge ordered Apple to backdoor an iPhone that was used by one of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino shootings in December. Apple is fighting the order which would compromise the security of all its users around the world.

The House of Commons Science and Tech Committee has published its report on the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, influenced by comments submitted by 50 individuals, companies, and organizations, including EFF. The report is the first of three investigations by different Parliamentary committees. While it was intended to concentrate on the technological and business ramifications of the bill, their conclusions reflect the key concern of lawmakers, companies, and human rights groups about the bill’s dangerously vague wording.

Congressional Representatives grilled the parties responsible for the U.S. implementation of controversial changes to the Wassenaar Arrangement in a joint hearing before subcommittees of the House Oversight and Homeland Security Committees today. Witnesses included officials from the Department of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of State, as well as representatives of the tech industry, including Symantec, Microsoft, VMWare, and the Information Technology Industry Council.

Chances are that you didn't go a few days without hearing the word "cyber" last year. It's for good reason. It was a year of data breaches and hacks, impacting the public and private sector alike. Congress used some of these incidents to fear-monger and pass fundamentally flawed legislation, chiefly the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), that didn't even address the basic problem of poor security practices. So as 2015 comes to a close, we thought we would revisit a few.